In online shopping, there are two reasons why buyers give negative reviews: one is normal negative reviews, and the other is malicious negative reviews.

1. Normal negative reviews

The reasons for normal negative reviews include service problems, product quality problems, buyer’s own problems and other problems.

1) Service problems Service problems generally include slow customer service response, delivery problems and poor service attitude. Due to the large number of inquiries, negative reviews caused by slow customer service response are the most undesirable, regrettable and most necessary to solve. Of course, this situation does not exist on the Amazon platform without pre-sales consultation, but it is very easy to occur on platforms such as AliExpress, eBay and Dunhuang.

(1) Service attitude: Negative reviews caused by poor customer service attitude can be regarded as a relatively common phenomenon, which includes the customer service’s own language quality and the customer’s own difficultness.

(2) Logistics speed: Regarding delivery issues, many sellers are sometimes busy, especially when holding some large-scale events or holidays, and often send the wrong goods, forget to ship, or ship late. As a buyer, you will certainly be angry when encountering such a situation, and you may give the seller a medium or bad review. In terms of logistics, some remote areas may have slower logistics delivery due to climate, or many buyers may not receive the goods on time due to customs and other reasons, which may easily lead to buyers giving medium or bad reviews.

(3) Damage during delivery: It is also a common phenomenon that the delivery items are damaged during transportation due to the negligence of the courier staff. After receiving the goods, the buyer thinks that there is something wrong with the seller’s product and will give a medium or bad review.

2) Product quality issues

(1) Product quality issues: Buyers generally pay more attention to product quality, so to do a good business, you must ensure that the product quality is up to standard, so as to retain old customers. Sometimes, due to negligence and improper handling of products, medium or bad reviews are caused, and sellers must treat them strictly and deal with them in a timely manner.

(2) Products are different from the description: It is also common to get medium or bad reviews due to the difference in color or size between the actual product and the description. Dealing with this situation requires certain skills and methods.

3) Buyer’s own reasons

(1) Low cost-performance ratio: Sometimes some buyers are more entangled. When they see a good product, they choose a cheaper one to buy it. However, after receiving the product, it is very different from what they imagined before, and they give a medium or bad review in anger.

(2) Don’t like the product: This is mainly the buyer’s problem, but don’t think that the customer is making trouble for no reason. Try to maintain a good attitude and communicate well with the buyer.

4) Other issues

In cross-border e-commerce transactions, there is a situation that is easy to occur. That is, after the seller waives the shipping fee, the buyer still needs to pay a certain fee when receiving the goods. In this case, the buyer is likely to think that he has been deceived and give a bad review. In fact, this is caused by the policies of some countries. For example, in the United States, goods with a declared value of more than US$500 are subject to import tariffs based on weight; in Canada and Australia, goods with a declared value of more than US$20 are subject to tariffs; and in European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany, the declared value of goods must be between US$20 and US$25. Once it exceeds, more tariffs will be generated. In this way, if customers in these regions exceed these limits, they must pay tariffs before they can get the goods.

Therefore, when buyers do not understand these issues, they will question the seller and give the seller a medium or bad review. Some extreme buyers will even refuse to sign for the goods because of the extra fees.

2. Malicious medium or bad reviews

There are all kinds of birds in the forest. Nowadays, e-commerce is developing more and more rapidly, and with it come some malicious medium or bad reviewers who make a living by “malicious reviews”. Malicious reviews refer to the behavior of buyers, competitors and other reviewers who seek additional property or other improper benefits by giving medium or bad reviews.

Malicious reviews mainly include the following situations: extortion, buyer coercion, peer and third-party fraud, and excessive rights protection.